27 September 2012

It's a very situational sort of question for me. At home and grocery shopping I'm pretty good at not having something or not indulging.

If I'm on a road trip and haven't thought about what I'm going to pick up for food, or haven't packed it myself, there's a 50/50 chance I'm going to pick up something terrible. I mean, it's a roadtrip, adventure, fun, it's a good opportunity to relax and enjoy yourself. Of course, that doesn't work so well with your diet if you do a lot of road trips...

If I go to a restaurant, all bets are off. I give consideration to the fact that I shouldn't eat gluten, but if it's deep fried or sugary, it's mine. All I can say, it's a good thing I don't go out to eat very often.

26 September 2012

If it's out of sight, it's out of mind. There is very little "naughty" food in my pantry, fridge, or freezer so the chances of me eating poorly is very little. It's not that I don't have any self-control, but sometimes you just give into your cravings if something tasty is easily accessible. If you have to drive down to a store to get what you crave you're definitely less likely to indulge in the junk food.

When I'm doing my grocery shop I also make sure to stick to the outside of the store. All the crap is arranged in shelves in the middle. It works on the same principle in that if you don't see it, you're less likely to buy it.

However, since I've been trying to eat as gluten free as possible (so far so good!) I simply can't have many treats or "naughty" food. It was frustrating at first because I would walk past the bakery section and stare longingly at the fresh loaves of rye or pumpernickel and tarts, cakes, and pies. Or I'd just want to grab a granola bar, or when it was my "cheat meal" just go out for fish and chips or a chicken burger.

While there are gluten free baked goods and breads available the cost is a major turn off so I've definitely indulged less in "naughty" and "junky" food. I've also ended up craving those bad things less so I don't stare at the breads... as long as I used to.

Anybody else have any tricks to avoiding junk food or dealing with cravings?

This isn't even counting the effects of drinking a lot of coffee and tea, and sometimes wine, does to my hydration. According to LiveStrong.com, a couple cups don't affect you much, but anything more than 300mg of consumptions (4+ cups/day) will start to dehydrate you.

I wouldn't smile for anything less.

I shouldn't take the above article as a get out of jail free card for how much coffee to continue consuming caffeine in its liquid forms. While I do drink herbal teas in conjunction to the coffee, and I've started to drink a glass of water for every mug of coffee or black tea I consume, but since I tend to drink a bottle of wine a couple times a week I'm likely still on the dehydrated side of things.

I sort of keep track of my water consumption on my MyFitnessPal profile, but I don't seem to be very diligent about it. Anybody have any recommendations to increase my water intake?

24 September 2012

Perhaps not as much as I should. When I run I can't be bothered to take a water bottle with me so I'll run for an hour with no extra fluid on board. It probably doesn't make up for it, but I do drink half a litre minimum before I go out and then immediately half a litre when I'm finished.

It's the same for swimming since pool water would be a poor choice (obviously). Since my water bottle broke I haven't been able take any water to the gym or TKD, which is worse since I can be there for around two hours.

I was better about hydration in Canada when the summer started because the heat was sometimes unbearable. The temperate weather here in the UK doesn't seem to make me as thirsty so I think that's why I've gotten lazy. By this time next week, I will have a new water bottle.

22 September 2012

I wish this question came up earlier in the month. While Taekwon Do isn't a single specific exercise it's something I've wanted to get back in for a few years now.

It's always bothered me that I never achieved my black belt 7 years ago, and it's been one of those bucket list items that I've really mad no progress on. But in the last two weeks I've gone to a couple classes here and it's been AWESOME. I have missed the training so much, even though the skin on my toes have blistered and torn away, forcing me to walk on the outside of my feet.

I look pretty ridiculous at the moment, but my feet will toughen up soon, and I'll be a lean, mean, fighting machine.

21 September 2012

On the other hand, I move them in very little increments because I feel like I have a lot of bad days. So if I don't do so well at the new level then I don't feel so much like a failure and avoid demoralization. It there's not a big step I know that if I take a break it won't take me ages to get back up again either.

I suppose it means my progress is quite slow, but isn't slowly moving forward better than not moving at all? I think so.

20 September 2012

I remember going to the gym and lifting weights as a teenager. This doesn't sound weird now since we have so many teenage athletes that are on the verge of being professionals and they regularly spend hours in the gym. But at 15, in my home town, I can think of only myself and Terias McKlay.

It was a combination of both my parents that taught me about reps and sets, and as far as they knew a person lifted heavy weights fewer times to build bulk and lighter weights more times to tone. Essentially true, but this notion has since been revised. But until about a year or two ago, I still structured my work out and sets accordingly: 3 sets of 30 is what I had always aimed for, and sometimes still today. What can I say, I love repetition. But I never saw any real improvement in shape, tone, or strength, and then it dawned on me, after reading an article in Oxygen, that you're never going to get stronger if you don't challenge your muscles (I wish I had kept the article). Aka. Lift heavier weights. It's only been since January that I've really started to challenge myself to different rep structures, different weights, and different exercises. It's worked in so far that I'm stronger, and I've come to appreciate pyramid sets, sometimes I like to be a tool and do an overload set. 10 reps at x kg, 10 reps at x+10 kg, 10 reps at x+20 kg. I don't get too far because I'm not actually that strong, haha.

19 September 2012

All sorts of things! I think about the most things when I'm running or swimming. When I'm doing something with repetitions I'm usually distracted by the counting. The really insecure things that crop up regularly:

"How bad is my ass jiggling?"

"Does my wedgie look as bad as it feels?"

"What really is the expression on my face?" aka. Can I turn Medusa to stone instead

Let me start off by saying that I've done four blog hops in rather quick succession, I apologize if I don't reply and comment right away. I will get everybody as soon as possible! Also, a big thank you to all the people hosting the hops this month that I've participated in:

I have difficult time listing my preferred or favourite genres because the things I like sometimes transcend genres. Or the listed genre on IMDB or iTunes I disagree with, or just have no clue with the genre is, for example "alernative new age" ... What?

Movies: I love action movies and all of it's sub-genres. I love nothing more than a well choreographed hand to hand scene, a mass of explosions, wicked car chases, or shoot out with a million bullets having to be dodged. Some of my favourite movies that come to mind are: The Matrix, Kill Bill, Transformers, The Expendables, The Bourne Saga, Troy, The Pirates of the Caribbean Saga, Fast & The Furious franchise, Underworld Saga, Resident Evil Saga, The 13th Warrior, X-men, and the list just goes on....

Music: Since high school my music tastes have changed a great deal. I used to love JPop and Punk music a lot, and then it changed to singer/songwriter and alternative music in college, and now I'm really enjoying more pop and dance type music. Possibly because I need more help with motivation and only something with a drumming beat gets me moving.

Books: I still love me an epic adventure. The Wheel of Time series will always be my favourite, even though Rand Al'Thor will always be a bit of a douche.

16 September 2012

It's not often I get blogger's block, and it's funny it strikes me as I try to write a post about a topic I have many opinions about. Perhaps it's because I'm being challenged to just be positive about womanhood and women instead of just letting of a torrent of rants about all the negative things women do to each other.

Sometimes I feel like I was a truly naive child growing up and not because my parents did anything wrong, but I have quite vividly in my mind just not noticing that I was "the daughter". I knew that I was a girl, and that sometimes I was made to wear dresses and my hair was often allowed to be longer than my brothers, but I didn't really feel like a separate creature from my brothers or other boys that I went to school with.

I read an article today that just made me sad, and instead of getting into it too much, I'll just share it here. What I have to say about it is that I'm sure both my parents were happy to have children of both genders, but I feel like they would have been happy too just to have three boys as well. What I am grateful to both my parents is that even though I am their only daughter, and the only grand daughter, that they put very few gender expectations on me. Sure I had dolls and did a lot of crafts, but I was encouraged to learn everything my brothers did, to be involved in sport as my brothers, and to be as tech savvy as possible.

It wasn't until I was in college that my mom started to put more emphasis on the fact that I was "a daughter" and that's different from her sons and that my dad "wrapped around my finger" as my mom would say. I find myself playing the part of "the dutiful daughter" now and again over the last couple years, but they've been largely positive experiences (though I complained like a cat with a broken foot at the time).

Tomboy, butch, not romantic, not girly, boyish, nerdy, geeky were words that people sort of used to describe
throughout school, but I never liked them much. I've always had a
problem describing myself, putting labels on myself as it were, because
none of them fit as neatly as when other people use one word
descriptions for themselves. Around the I met my husband the words people started to describe me differently "fit" or "pretty" started circulating a lot. Granted I started to dress more feminine and pretty, but it was like my husband just brought it out of me and I liked it.

Both my husband and I have had to re-evaluate how we view each other as man and woman, and how we view other women. My husband has very traditional ideas about women and I'm quite forward thinking and sometimes that clashes, especially on topics such as future child rearing. But his traditional approach isn't suffocating, it's quite sweet actually, when he opens doors for me or makes me walk on the inside of the side walk. He makes the effort to be a gentleman and make me feel like a lady.

The latest of descriptive words to add to a restrictive repertoire is "army wife". I have to say that I've had very few positive experiences in dealing with other "army wives" as so, so, so many of them seem to affirm the army wife stereotypes. However, I am grateful that I have a husband that, in spite of insisting on being a gentleman, has the sense and the heart to let me the woman that I am: one that's in touch with her masculine and feminine side. And if I have to be the only one in this town with a nick name of "Pramsville" (Buggeyville for non EU members), I'm happy enough.

I could keep going about this at this point, but I'll cut it off here and stop boring everybody. Looking forward to reading everybody else's take on womanhood!

Though, if I actually wanted to get anything done I'd probably need somebody like Selene from Underworld or Alice from Resident Evil. I imagine they wouldn't tolerate slacking very much, wouldn't feel bad for me if I got her, and would kick my ass if I didn't try to kick theirs first.

14 September 2012

When I started to run I did it on a treadmill. This was a terrible idea, but no one told me. Or else, no one thought it was as terrible as I felt it was. To put it simply, it is effing boring. I struggled through every running session because I could visibly see how much time had elapsed and how painfully slow I was going.

Then I started running outside. At first only during fair weather, but it was enough to get me hooked into running during the crap weather as well. And then I finally understood why people ran. It doesn't really matter how fast or how slow you go, so long as you don't stop, and you get to see so many more interesting things!

Outside 1 - Gym 0

I have basically grown up in swimming pools. My parents like to tell the tale of how I jumped into a swimming pool before I was even able to walk, never mind swim. When we moved to Medicine Hat and discovered the number of outdoor pools that existed and had lane swimming every. Single. Afternoon. It was hard not to enjoy it. Workout out and getting a tan? Yes please.

At the pool in Medicine Hat with the husband unit snoozing.

Outside 2 - Gym 0

I don't mind circuit training, since I typically go to a gym and have done full body work outs. I've always had a problem with boot camp style work outs, since instructors make very little allowances for different fitness levels. It's like, "YOU WILL GO BEYOND YOUR CAPABILITIES AND GIVE ME 1000%" and end up only lasting 15 secs. I'd like to take a moment and remind people that life is not like "The Biggest Loser". You will not stick to it, you will not become famous, and you will not feel good.

If you do, you are a small section of the population and kudos to you.

My husband and I were out of a walk shortly after I moved here to Bordon and were quite intrigued and pleased to discover the Fitness Trail close by. A series of structures that allowed you to work your upper and lower body as hard as you wanted to.

I will try to get pictures of us working out next time in our sexy sweatiness.Source

Following the first workout my husband and I completed there, we were both super sore the next day. But! With a little added colour in our face from the sun.

Outside 3 - Gym 0

Suffice to say, I've come to really enjoy working out outdoors and I will be really sad when the winter sets in.

13 September 2012

Funny how once you start looking for blog hops you suddenly find a million? Well, I did. As advertised on the left, I will be participating in another one next week Monday as well. I didn't expect September to be such a busy month!

About this time last year I wrote a blog post about Why I Write. I remember feeling quite passionate about the subject and writing it rather fervently at the time too. It's a bit lengthy, so I skimmed a lot of it (I won't be offended if no one reads it, it's quite long, actually) but I found a lot of reasons of why I write still hold to be true:

Keeping a journal is therapy. This was how I first started to write as a kid. I carried this over into the angsty teen years, and sort of had an estranged relationship with it during Uni. However, on any given really, awful, shitty day, I always returned to scribbling into a notebook and pouring my heart out. Not ever going to be published, unless my future grandchildren think it will be a get rich quick scheme, I have used those journals as a way to keep sane.

To keep a sort of documentation of my life. Every family has a history, some more dramatic than others, and I think that the past 3 generations of my family is one of those interesting ones. My grandparents have lived through a lot and I think getting their story and wisdom down would be something priceless to pass onto the next generation.

Communicating or having a voice. I feel like I have something to contribute to this world, and why should I feel any different? Writing and blogging are avenues for me to make myself heard and make the contributions. I'm quite grateful that it's easier today than it has been before.

Connecting with people. Kind of related to number 3, communicating with people will hopefully allow me to connect with other people. Sure there will be a lot of people where you'll be like, "No way, totally can't relate" sort of like me not liking chocolate. But then, sometimes you come across a blog or a book and you're like "I totally know what you're talking about!" and you feel a little less lonely.

Networking. Again, related to the previous point, and more specific to blogging, but this is why I love blogging. When I read the blogs of other published authors or fitness experts I feel like I have an online mentor with all the tips and tricks they post, or "how to" guides.

Food is a close second, but if it would be socially acceptable to sleep following every workout, I would. So I have to settle with eating the "right" snacks following a work out and drinking lots of water.